


Here and Now

by AstroGirl



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-28
Updated: 2013-08-28
Packaged: 2017-12-24 23:10:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/945787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstroGirl/pseuds/AstroGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is when the three of them talked.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Here and Now

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Eleventy Fest for thecollapsedstars, who requested River/Eleven/human!TARDIS and "A bit of a locked room scenario. Three impossible beings locked in one room. Is there anything that wouldn't happen?"

He has me hovering in the Vortex. It's annoying. Not that I don't love the Vortex. Of course I do, it's my home. But who wants to stay _home_?

To relieve the boredom, I let most of my consciousness drift into the future. Not the immediate future, but the future of our next destination, and the next. If he leaves us here long enough, I may retaliate by making our next stop dull. Well, _comparatively_ dull. Nothing like the last place, anyway, where he and his River got to have a lovely time running about rescuing the remnants of a fallen empire from alien invaders.

Actually, I quite liked that place, myself. I could feel its past everywhere, rippling over me and through me and into the future my thief was building. It was almost impressive. Not as advanced as ours, of course, but full of minds a little like my own. Knowing that they were all dead, at the point in time where we sat, was a little sad, but at least they are all still there in the past. So few of my sisters are.

So most of me is busy molding the future, and some of me is perceiving/remembering the past, in that happy-sad sort of way, and very little of me is paying any attention to what is happening there in the Vortex, until he climbs under my console and starts fiddling.

I stop and look back at the last few minutes.

The thief and his River are still talking about that last world. Which is unusual. And a little irritating. That's not how things are supposed to work. When one adventure is over, it's time for the next one, on and on and on, until we've seen everything there is to see. (Exactly how/when/where I learned to be impatient, I don't really know. It isn't supposed to be possible for me. But we've never been too concerned about what's supposed to be possible for us, my thief and I, and if I want to be impatient, I am.)

The two of them have some piece of that world's technology, from the time of its great empire. I can see the device's history stretching out behind it, longer than my thief's, but boringly linear. They are squabbling over it:

"I _am_ an archeologist, you know," River says. "You have to expect me to take an interest in the occasional artifact."

"This belongs to the Halatraxian royal family!" the thief says, chiding her. But he is already poking at it, looking to see how it works. I don't think he's aware he's doing it.

"It's not like they have a use for it," says River. "The Halatraxians haven't known how to make any of this technology work for at least a thousand years."

"And you don't know what it does. It could be some kind of weapon."

"Are you seriously getting shirty with _me_ for being curious about something potentially dangerous? Seriously?"

He makes a little muttering noise with no words in it.

"Anyway," River says, "It's not a weapon. It's obviously got some sort of neural interface. Not a very efficient way of killing people."

"For some people," he says, "it's not about efficiency." He runs his sonic screwdriver over the device. "It's probably some sort of--"

"Virtual reality device?"

He was about to say that. I can see the future past that didn't happen, where he did. He looks sulky. I've been with him long enough to know that expression very well. "Yes," he says. 

"What do you say?" River leans back against my console. She keeps her elbow well away from any buttons that shouldn't accidentally be pressed. She's always very good about that. "Shall we give it a try?"

The thief doesn't answer. His attention -- organic beings have such a limited capacity for attention -- is on the device. He taps it with the screwdriver. A panel opens, and wires fall out. "Interesting!" He looks at the device, at the screwdriver, at the device. "Ah," he says. "No. Looks like we'd need an extra-dimensional artificial intelligence to mediate the interface. Like the ones the ancient Halatraxians used in the administration of their empire. It's useless without one, I'm afraid."

River straightens up. "Sweetie?" she says. The thief looks up at her. 

She looks at my console, and then at him, arching the little lines of hair above her eyes.

"No!" he says. "I mean, yes, but..." His funny little face goes all crinkly. "Really?"

"Yes," says River, very firmly. 

She looks at him steadily, her mouth curling up slightly as he fidgets and bites his lip, and makes little hemming and humming noises. Then he stops, smiles broadly, and says, "Oh, all right, why not? Might be fun!"

And that is when they are fiddling under my console.  
 _  
_Oh. I see. _This_. This is happening _now_.

I gather myself in from the past and the future, concentrating myself onto this small slice of time. From what I remember, it's going to be very interesting.

**

There's a fizzy, zappy sort of feeling as the machine connects to my circuitry. It's not unpleasant, but it is strange. It's an alien device, after all, designed for creatures a little like me, but not exactly like me. Well, there _are_ no creatures exactly like me, are there? Not anymore. 

That's all right. I'm used to alien things. Comfortable with them, even. I make some small shifts in my structure to accommodate it. I have to teach myself to speak in a language it can understand, but that's not difficult. It's not very different from translating for my thief and his friends, and I can do that without even thinking about it.

Then, with a _click!_ so loud I imagine even the organic creatures can hear it, we are connected. I can feel it reaching into the deepest part of me, passing through the supposedly impregnable firewall the thief installed around my matrix with no difficulty at all. How very typical. Although I suppose I _did_ help it along, so I shouldn't disparage his efforts entirely.

Another _click!_ and another _fizz!_ , and, oh, look! I'm back in one of those funny little bodies. Only not entirely, this time, because I can still feel most of me safely nestled in my matrix where it belongs. Which means this time it's not a body whose organs are burning up from the inside. I like it much better this way, I must say. It's almost pleasant.

The place I've found myself in -- or this part of me has -- is extremely boring, though. It's all empty and white and made of walls, and, yes, perhaps it's _technically_ bigger on the inside, but not by much. If I had a room like this inside me, I'd be ashamed. They should have specified some visual background when they activated the device, but of course they didn't bother figuring that out. Even if I didn't already partially exist in this time before it happened, I wouldn't be surprised. He has no sense of aesthetics, my thief. Every time he changes my décor, it's still up to me to supply all the interesting little touches.

I shake my head -- I think that's the right gesture for disapproval -- and wait the 17.3 seconds until they arrive. Oh, look, there they are.

They arrive facing away from me, towards one of those dull, blank walls. "Hmm," the thief says, "yes, definitely some sort of virtual reality setup, although obviously not a very interesting--" He turns as he says this, and sees me, and stops, and his eyes go all funny. "Sexy?!" he blurts out.

I smile. I've definitely got the hang of that. Smiling is easy. "Hello, Doctor," I say. To me, he'll always be my thief, but I think he likes it when I use his name. I'm starting to get the hang of names, as well.

River looks at me, too, and smirks. I've perceived that expression on her before, but it's different and interesting, seeing it with eyes. Even simulated eyes.

"Er, yes," says the thief and I like seeing his expression with eyes, too. It's so embarrassed and confused. It makes me laugh a little. "River, this is, ah--"

"The TARDIS, I presume," says River, and smiles at me in a way that makes me feel strangely warm. "I'm very glad to meet you, In person, I mean."

I smile the same smile back at her. "Hello, River," I say. I've never had any trouble with her name, even if I couldn't say it until now. The only water in the forest. My River. I'm really very proud of her. I think she's one of the best things I ever do. My thief very much needed someone like him, that he could talk to with mouths. Not that that's all they do with their mouths... Ooh, that reminds me! Kissing! Kissing is _fun_!

I grab my thief and try it again, and this time it's even more fun, because he stops flailing and squirming after a moment, and he moves his lips, so I move mine, and it's very stimulating. I keep doing it until I can see that I'm about to stop, and when we're finished, he lets out a tiny sigh, which is also nice. "This is a very _good_ simulation!" I say happily. Then I bite his ear, just a little, so I can win.

"Finished?" says River, making that smirking face again, and the thief immediately starts flailing his arms about again. 

"I, ah... River. I, ah..."

"Oh, relax, sweetie," she says. "I had no illusions about being your first wife. Or your _only_ wife."

"Oh," says the thief. He goes very still. "Oh."

"Am I your wife?" I say. "I'm not sure what that means, but it sounds like fun." I tilt my head at him a little, noticing something. "Why are you red?"

"I'm not red!" he sputters.

"You are, a little," says River. "It's rather cute. Don't you think?"

"I'm not sure why," I say. "But, yes, it is!"

The thief takes a deep breath, runs his fingers through his hair, and, disappointingly, makes himself stop being red. "How are you even here?" he says to me. "I mean, like this? It shouldn't even be possible!"

I shrug. Or at least, I think I do. It's the first time I've tried it. "The device you patched into me -- without asking me first, I might add, as usual -- is designed to help extra-dimensional creatures communicate with simpler life forms, like you."

He glares at me a little, but I'm used to ignoring it when he does that.

"Of course, it hasn't had any experience with creatures quite as complicated as I am, but it's doing a very good job of attempting to compensate by not channeling any more of me than it needs to. My consciousness will burn it out eventually, of course, but I should last longer here than in a real human body."

"But," says the thief. "But, before... 'This is when we talked,' you said. As if it was the only time." His voice is all soft. It makes me feel warm in a different way from before. "I thought it was the only time."

I make a little tsking noise with my tongue. I like this noise. I need to use it more often. "Time Lords. You have such ridiculously limited ways of thinking about time. As if it were all divided up into neat little chunks. That _is_ the time we talked. And so is this." I touch his cheek with my fingertips, because, for some reason, I want to. He is soft. Organic and vulnerable. It makes me feel protective. In a different way than I usually do.

"You look like Idris," he says. "Still. Or should I say again?"

"I do," I say. It's the only way I know how to look as a humanoid. "Do you like it?"

He looks at me, and I can tell he's seeing the image of a woman who is dead, that he does like seeing me in her form, but feels he shouldn't. I stroke his cheek again, and do not make him answer. 

He closes his eyes and opens them again. He raises a hand, stuttering and hesitating like a misaligned time rotor as it reaches out to touch my face. "Well," he says. "Hello again, old girl." He smiles. I can see every year I've known him in that smile, and I love them all. I move my fingers a little to touch the smile, to see if it feels as nice as it looks. His lips twitch at the contact, and he lets out a little breath of a laugh. Well, he's explored me, I think; it's only fair if I'm allowed to explore him, too. So I run my hand across his chin, down his neck, thinking how interesting and strange it would be to have a sense of touch all the time.

Behind me, I hear River stirring, shifting her center of gravity back and forth. In a moment, she will have said, "I think perhaps I'll go and check on things back in reality." But I don't want her to do that, to suggest she should leave us, so I respond before she has the chance.

"You can't," I say, dropping my hand from the thief's face and turning towards her. "You didn't specify a time limit or exit phrase when you entered, so it's up to me to end the simulation. Only I don't have the codes." Admittedly, I could probably figure them out. I _am_ very clever. But, why bother?

"You mean, we're trapped in here?" River frowns.

"Yes," I say. "Until my presence burns out the circuitry. In--" I look ahead. "--four hours, thirteen minutes, twenty-seven seconds. Then the safety overrides will engage, and we'll all be kicked back out." I look over at my thief. "Honestly," I say. "You never _do_ learn how to operate machinery properly before you use it." I turn back to River. It's interesting, all this having to point my eyes at the person I'm talking to. "Do you know, it took him half a century to figure out where my antiphasic materialization adjustment calibrators were?"

"Oh, well," River says, looking at my thief with an interesting glint in her eyes. "At least he does figure out where everything is eventually. Don't you, sweetie?"

The Doctor coughs. Rather a lot. I frown at him. "Are you ill?" I ask. He doesn't get ill often, but when he does, it's never enjoyable.

He shakes his head, and wheezes out a "no." Which I don't find very convincing. I'm about to insist on more information, but suddenly the coughing fit is over, and he's looking at me as if he's just thought of something.

"Hang on!" he says, and points at me accusingly. "Hang on. Just a minute ago, did you look into the future to see what River was going to say and then answer her before she said it?"

"It was one minute, seventeen seconds," I say. 

"You did! You... You deliberately created a paradox, just so you could skip ahead in the conversation!"

I make that tsking sound I like again. "It was only a _small_ one."

"Oh, I _do_ like you," says River. She's lounging against one of the white walls now. She looks very comfortable. To the thief, she says, "You know, you have excellent taste in women."

He shrugs. "They choose me, apparently," he says, and gives her a soft look like the one he gave me before. "I've never entirely understood why."

"It's because you're not boring," I say, unsure whether he's joking or just being stupid. "Obviously." But I'm not looking at him -- you don't _always_ have to have your eyes pointed at the person you're talking to. "And I like you, too," I say to River. "I liked you before you existed. That's partly why I helped to make you happen."

River laughs a little, her eyes crinkling up. "Thank you," she says.

And then, because I realize I haven't yet and now seems like it's going to have been the right time, I kiss her.

It's very nice, all wet and bitey and involving interesting new things to do with tongues. When it's over, I turn back to my thief, who doesn't seem to know quite which part of the featureless room to look at. Perhaps he's ashamed. Well, he _should_ be. "She's better at that than you are!" I say accusingly.

"Oh, no, not really," says River. She puts her arm around my shoulders, which I like. "Not once you've got him to relax."

"I--- I--" he sputters, and I laugh, because he talks so much that it's fun to see him not being able to make words.

"Fortunately we have several hours to kill," says River. "By the look of him, it might just take that long."

"River..." he says.

"Oh, come here." She holds out the arm that isn't around me.

"River..." he says again.

"River _and_ Sexy!" I correct him, and hold out my arm, too. It seems like the thing to do, somehow.

River laughs. "Come on, Doctor. Don't be difficult."

He mutters something about impossible women under his breath, but he comes, and then we're all holding each other, and there's a word for how this feels. _Happy,_ that's it. I feel happy, with my thief and his River, and my River, and her thief, and all the kissing and touching that hasn't started yet, but will... _Right now._


End file.
